As far as I can tell, the only reason the ship docks in Victoria at all is so the ship can open up the casino in international waters – since we are visiting an international country.

Anyway, once we docked…. We caught an (expensive) shuttle into downtown … and once there spend more money for another shuttle from the same company out to Butchart Gardens… and back to the ship. A bit annoying to overpay like that … but I guess that’s what vacations are for?

The #1 highlight that Julie wanted to see was Butchart Gardens, but that is several miles out of town.

So we jumped on the shuttle – with a narrated drive – out to the gardens …

We learned all kinds of things…. Like that Victoria is the retirement capital of Canada.

Mostly because they have perfect weather pretty much year-round and no poisonous snakes or spiders…

*jealous!*

But homes are correspondingly expensive, I guess.

Locals in the suburbs are encouraged to use their land for agriculture and such… .so apparently some of them will leave a vegetable cart of sorts at the end of their driveway with a cash box and just depend on the ‘honor system’ to sell their goods …

Kind of adorable…

We got the Butchart Gardens before sunset …. but not much before sunset ….

Holy geez this place is gorgeous ….

This is about the time on our walk when Andrew started talking about how he wanted to get wooden coffins to use as benches in our garden one day. Awesome.

After our wilderness/Gold Rush tour, we were dropped off back in town about 1:30p or 2p. Just about time for lunch – at the Skagway Brewing Company.

Beer-broth chili was filling and warm and great for how cold it was outside ….

We also got a couple Alaska souvenirs while we were there (more on this in a future post)!

After lunch, Julie and Kaitlin did a little bit of shipping before heading back to the ship.

But Andrew and I sought out some more history!

waaaaay way back when Skagway started to be settled, Captain Moore stated a claim for the whole town, but when some 200 or so miners showed up, they just took it over and declared Moore’s log cabin to be in the middle of State Street – so they dragged it aside!

That log cabin is still in town (in the image below) …. and TINY!

(man, my husband is soooo handsome :) )

We really didn’t o a whole lot more before heading back to the ship.

It was CRAZY cold and SUPER windy on the mile or so walk, so by the time we got back to the ship, we crashed and took a nap for a couple of hours.

(continuing our streak of a nap-a-day on this vacation)

Then up to the deck for some reading and relaxing before dinner ….

And we closed out the day with this GORGEOUS sky on our way out of port:

These people clearly visited the glacier with the intent of taking a plunge in the icy water (and then darting out again)!

Not only does the Mendenhall glacier empty into this bay/channel/body of water …. But just to one side of it is this big waterfall, cascading down the rocks, spraying a mist of water for yards in every direction…

It’s probably just as well that we didn’t have a lot of time to stay before the last shuttle back to town – since it started to lightly rain….

If you ever find yourself in Juneau, just know the Red Dog Saloon is overpriced for the quality of food …. and it may have held some history at one time but now is just super touristy….

The live musician was pretty entertaining, though….

After we ate we just headed back to the ship …. Technically, we still had a few hours before we had to board, but it was cold and rainy …. so we’ll have to visit the Governor’s Mansion next time.

Since we were in town for dinner, we skipped the fancy dinner in the dining room and instead played dominoes up on the deck.

Kaitlin taught us this game (Mexican Train) that has several rounds and can take a long time …

… and during the time we were on deck playing, SEVERAL people walked by and took notice. Including a couple different people who asked us what we were playing and proceeded to tell us about a domino game called ‘Chicken Foot’ ….

Funnily enough, all these Chicken-Foot people had southern accents, so I assume it’s a regional game?

Then off to bed so we could get up early for the next day and the next port !

When we booked our cruise, I was a bit disappointed that such a big piece of Wednesday would be taken up with “scenic cruising” – bah! Scenic cruising is just another way of saying they want to keep us on the ship to spend more money on drinks and gambling.

Turns out I was wrong….

Wednesday morning was one of the coolest parts of the trip and the #1 reason I’m so glad we got a room with a balcony!

The ship entered Tracy Arm Fjord about 6am for about 4 hours of scenic cruising …

Andrew and I woke up not long after 6am and bundled up to sit out on our balcony to watch the ice float by, keep our eyes peeled for wildlife and enjoy the scenery…

I got up first, and as soon as I saw these HUGE blocks of ice I gasped audibly and called to Andrew!

Since it was early morning …. at times the clouds were so thick it was like sailing into THE NOTHING (video below)

Farther down to the mouth of the Arm were bigger pieces of ice which had clearly broken off from the Sawyer Glacier much longer ago and floated all the way out, melting all the way …

(I loved seeing Andrew excited about taking photos on the trip)

We got room service breakfast delivered about 7:30a … and by that time we were well into the corridor….

and I was wearing PJ pants, a hoodie sweatshirt and wrapped in 3 beach towels to keep warm…

As we got closer to the Glacier the water seemed almost covered with ice. I’m so amazed that we got as close as we did to the glacier.

I heard someone say that when we entered Tracy Arm a different ship captain took over for the VERY different kind of sailing.

As we got closer to the glacier, there were seals perched about on various pieces of the ice (adorable)…. Andrew and I went up to the prow of the ship for the best view of the glacier before the ship turned around.

While we were up on the prow of the shop we even saw a bear! In the wild! Walking along the edge of one of the sheer granite mountains that lined either side of the channel….

(close up photo below, then wider shot below that)

Very small to our eyes and rather far away … but still very clearly a bear…

We turned around to go back down the channel around 8a or 9a … at which point I went back to bed…

When we woke up Tuesday morning (early) the ship was slowly slowly coming into park, getting into position to be parked for the day …

The early morning sun was peeking over the mountains to the east, and the whole of the town was illuminated with this gorgeous light.

These first 2 photos were taken from our balcony … where we could overlook the bits of neighborhood just outside the city center … and imagine how fantastic it would be to live surrounded by trees and mountains like this.

(only in the summer, of course. Snow might kill me )

Due to all the napping on Monday we were awake, ready, breakfasted and off the ship by 8am!

Princess ships dock a little bit outside of town …. so we spent some time walking into Ketchikan-proper, along the shore, bought some postcards and discussed how we wanted to spend the day …

Ketchikan doesn’t really have a lot of big, obvious sites to see, so we were pretty open to the possibilities.

Once we were a bit into town, we stumbled upon this small (non-flashy) booth advertising a couple-hour-long wildlife tour – from Northern Tours of Alaska.

The town is fairly small and there is only so much we can do without a tour of some kind ….

So we hopped in a 13-passenger van and saw the town!

Our tour guide – Kurt – is a lifetime Ketchikan local … Except when he graduated from high school, looked around and said “been there, done that” and moved to Seattle for awhile to find a wife! haha! (true story)….

Kurt (in the center of the image below) told us all about the totem poles – their history and their meaning – as well as about the master carver who still works on-site (now in his 80s, I think) ….

There was a totem pole (3 photos up) with a carving of a (short) Abraham Lincoln at the very top (the ‘shame’ position) ….

The carving of Lincoln was being ‘shamed’ because 1) no inanimate objects can be portrayed on a totem pole and 2) the people being shamed and being represented were brought to Alaska on a ship called Lincoln.

I’m pretty bummed I didn’t end up getting a photo of our cruise dinner waitress, Galina from Bulgaria…. She was all kinds of awesome.

Our first night on the cruise (Sunday) our waitress was this intense Thai girl named something like Trixie. I don’t remember. She seemed to be rushing us and not really paying attention. Luckily for us, she started out the night saying that she was temporary and our normal server would be back tomorrow.

Thank goodness.

Our assistant server – Marian but spelled differently – was adorable and sweet and I just wanted to take her home with me!

Marian is from Serbia and she had a great accent and was young and blonde and genuinely interested in us. Throughout the week she would ask us about our day as she brought us drinks or cleared our plates. We found out at the end of the week that she is up for a promotion – which is great for her because she totally deserves it

Our main server – Galina – was …. very professional. Very no nonsense. And very generous. My guess is mid-late-30s, short brown hair, Bulgarian.

The first night we had her, I ordered my dessert and she just looked at me …. and said, “No. Pick again.” hahah!

Who DOES that?

She proceeded to tell me how “boring” the dessert I chose was and how I really wanted something else (perfectly nice and kind of teasing about it). So. …. OK. You’ve got to trust your waitress, right? I ordered something else.

She ended up bringing me both. …. Just so I could see/taste what I had originally ordered.

And of course she was right

Every night Galina would give us her recommendations – at least 1 from each course – and if we didn’t order it she’d bring it to us anyway.

One night, Katie and Julie skipped the formal dinner so it was just Andrew and I …. Once we got to desserts, we each ordered…. and then Galina ended up bringing us 4 or so MORE desserts! The sugar-wreckage strewn about the table was incredible

The servers are always a fun part of your cruise …. Having the same person (or team) every night really makes the “formal” dining room less formal and more inviting.

We had quite a bit of distance to cover between Seattle and Ketchikan …. The ship was going a tad fast and the 4 of us all felt a bit of sea sickness to one degree or another.

The good news is: Julie brought Dramamine and some other sea sickness medicine so we ended up being fine.

The bad news is: The Dramamine made me super drowsy and I slept most of the day.

(which I am attributing to the little bit of Dramamine I took in the morning… but could also because I run myself ragged most of the time without a break and my brain just gave up a little once we got on the cruise ship)

Monday morning we woke up at a leisurely time and met Kaitlin and Julie at the ‘fancy’ dining room for a nice sit-down breakfast…

…. a leisurely breakfast that Kaitlin couldn’t make it through because she felt too sick.

… a leisurely breakfast that included a waiter – named Elvis who we later made friends with – singing some kind of morning song to me as he passed by

Then after breakfast it was time for napping reading on the deck.

I fell asleep in a deck chair.

Woke up in time for a mid-morning snack (delicious, light soup they were serving from a special cart on deck)

Then I’m pretty sure I fell back asleep, only to wake up in time for lunch.

Nope – not an exaggeration…. I must have gotten SOME reading done… but mostly just slept and ate

For lunch we went to one of the other restaurants on the ship that was doing a special British-themed meal. I loved (loved) the bangers and mash I had in England a couple years ago … and loved the bangers and mash I had again on the ship.

I think Andrew mostly wanted to go to get some Guinness

I honestly don’t remember what we did after lunch …. which means it was probably a nap! haha!

About mid-afternoon we were up on the Lido deck again …. in the ‘Conservatory’ …. Partly because it was warm but still kind of felt like being outside … and partly because this was the one part of the deck that had tables and chairs.

Andrew and I both brought our books … I tried to start working on my Alaska travel journal … and Andrew got hungry again.

Monday night was Formal Night at dinner …. so we started getting ready a little early.

Turns out we’re both a *little* too fat to be comfortable in the formal clothes we brought …. But that’s OK. It’s not like we were going to go out dancing after dinner …. ha!

Monday night was the first time we actually met our waitress Galina (she was off doing something else Sunday) …. I’ll tell you about her tomorrow. Loved her

and here we go … starting into the wealth of Alaska photos and stories we collected over a week …

Andrew and I got up absurdly early on Sunday, June 26, headed over to the airport, and flew north to Seattle.

Julie and Kaitlin had made a road-trip of it so were actually in Seattle w/ their car and were able to pick us up from the airport….

Since our flight was *so* early, we had time to grab some breakfast before going over to the ship/dock. God bless technology – Andrew ‘yelped‘ a cute little diner called Pancake Chef on the way to the docks.

Then off to the ship…. Really – just a few minutes to do the whole check-in/security/security detail, and then on the ship with nothing to do…

And I mean that in the best way possible …

No emails to respond, to work to finish, no dishes to do …. Just hours of relaxing ahead of us.

And exploring.

(the view from our balcony: )

Once we got on the ship and had a bit of a chance to look around … Andrew started talking about if I had any interest in buying a boat and sailing around the world…

Which is funny, since he had a very similar reaction about living in Rome forever as soon as we got there.

While we were settling into our cabin we had 2 visitors.

The first was our cabin steward – Kennedy – stopping by to introduce himself and make sure we didn’t need anything. Very nice and made us feel a bit luxurious…

The other visitor was room service delivery.

Already.

After we had been on the ship 20 minutes and most definitely had not ordered room service.

Turns out my friend Ryan – who works for Princess – and helped us along the way of booking our cruise.

So being awesome like he is, he (and his wife) sent us a welcome gift + note of chocolate covered strawberries.

Um, yes please.

And then it was time to explore the ship – which is mostly just figuring out where we ‘live’ in relationship to the food

Our rooms were about 3 flights of stairs below the main Lido deck … that housed the buffet and the pools.